Six for Sunday

1. Jerry's birthday  We were excited to celebrate Jerry's birthday this week.  The kids get really excited for things like this and it's fun with them.  They had fun picking out some gifts for him and making him some cards.  They were the most excited about going out to Five Guys for dinner!  We had a fun evening together and loved celebrating our favorite guy!!

2. Off Track  This week was our first week off track.  We have some fun things planned.  We just really hope the weather works out.  In the meantime, we have had some fun at home so far and had a good week getting some jobs done around the house.

3. General Women's Meeting  I was so excited last fall when the church announced that this spring they would start holding the General Women's Meeting and that all girls 8 and older would be invited to attend.  Kate and I have been talking about this for weeks so we were excited to finally get to go.  It was a great evening with her and as I was sitting listening, I felt very grateful for having daughters so that I could go to meetings like this with them.  I know Jerry and Matt already get a little fed up with the emotional roller coasters that go on, and it's only going to get worse, so I apologized for the three girls, but I think Heavenly Father knew I would really want to have daughters to do things like this with!

4. Snuggles and stories  This morning I caught this really cute picture.  Abby brought Jerry this book and snuggled right up to him while he read it to her.  So cute!

5. Lakefront property  If you know where we live, you know we don't normally have lake front property.  But with the rain and snow lately, the retention ponds behind our house have filled up.  Actually, I think the drain in one of them is clogged because it immediately turns into a lake.  You can see the lake through the pine tree.  The kids have had a lot of fun this week feeding the ducks that have been swimming around in it.  I think I might like lake front property, if only we could keep any and all snakes away!

6. Help me!  Abby likes to climb.  This afternoon she wanted to sit in the chair at the kid table so I pulled the chair out for her.  Pretty soon she climbed up on the table and was dancing around having a great time.  She climbed down to the chair and the floor and everything was great.  A few minutes later I had to run upstairs for something so I left Abby in the care of Kate and Sara.  While I was upstairs, I could hear her start crying and when I came down, this is what I saw.  I quickly took a picture and then rescued her and then asked Kate and Sara, "Did you not hear her crying??"  They both were like, "What??"

Five for Funday Sunday

1. Thirteen Years  This past Monday Jerry and I celebrated our anniversary.  Thirteen years!  We were lucky enough to enjoy a little time without the kids in Moab and that was so awesome.  In my mind I had just kind of figured that that would be it for our celebrating, but I was so glad that Jerry stuck around Monday morning and took Abby and I to breakfast to celebrate and he wanted to take me to dinner too.  I was flattered that he still makes things special!  

 He didn't even care that I just threw some clothes on after taking the kids to school and didn't have time to put on makeup to go to breakfast.  Love that guy.  At breakfast we were talking about where things would be in another 13 years..  Matt would be 23, in college; Kate would be 21, in college; Sara would be 19, maybe in college, maybe on a mission and Abby would be 14 and home with us.  Crazy!  He's a great guy and I'm still happy every day that I married him!

2. Willy Wonka the musical  This past weekend Kate finally got to perform her play.  She was really excited about it.  It has been a bit of a roller coaster for her.  After a lot of practices she would come home and say that they didn't do anything but sit around and play the school ipads and it was kind of boring.  Luckily, two of her friends were in the play with her and that helped give her someone to hang out with.  Let me tell you, though, how things turned around when she got to start performing!  Thursday they did two shows for the school and she said that when she went back to class all her class was clapping for her and calling her an actress and, "she felt like a celebrity."  She told both Jerry and I on separate occasions that she loves to have people clapping for her and loves feeling like a celebrity.  Oh boy, someone help me when she's a teenager.  I was kind of hoping that the practices would have been so boring that she wouldn't want to do the play next year, but the performances have been so fun that she said now she does want to.  Yikes! 

 She played the part of an Oompa Loompa.  There were about 20 of them.  These are her two friends Hannah and Sammie.  They are pretty cute I must say!

I have to admit that the play was a lot better than I expected.  I was impressed with how good some of these elementary school kids can sing.  It was pretty neat.  Kate took part in 5 or 6 different songs so it was fun to get to see her so much.  She did great and certainly puts on a show for the crowd!  I was very proud of her and all the time she has put into this.  The deal was that if she did the play she couldn't be grumpy at home and say she was tired and busy.  She didn't do great holding up her end of the deal, but we all survived and she did remember what she'd agreed to and did try to keep her emotions in check.  I was proud of her for that too!

3. Another tooth  Sara lost her other front tooth this week.  She was very glad to have it come out.  I'd forgotten how they hurt when they're loose and it's kind of a pain.  It is really funny listening to her speak with her missing teeth.  She's got a pretty bad lisp.  The day she lost it her school reading book happened to have a lot of "s" sounds and we giggled the whole way through it.

 She is such a funny girl.  She found a plastic turtle and played with it all day.  She named him "Turds", short for turtle.  We had a lot of fun with that until we finally told her what turd meant.  Juvenile? Yes.  Hilarious?
Definitely!

4. Riverton Half  Yesterday I ran in my second half marathon for the month.  I was excited about this one because it was the first and only other half I'd run until Moab.  I ran a better race and finished stronger than Moab, so I was happy with that.  And today I'm not as sore as last week.  The last mile all I was thinking about was how I'm going to take a whole week off of running.  And my kids are now off track so I might even sleep in or at least lay in bed for a while some mornings!  Yeah!  The other fun thing about the race was that my sister and nephew also came up and ran.  I love to tell other people's secrets...  My nephew, Adam, did awesome!!  He won his age group and ran a fantastic time.  I'm actually not sure what place he was overall but at least top ten and I saw the front men runners and they were clearly fast.  I asked him if he'd been running a lot and he kind of said, "Yea, well I think I've run 11 miles all at once."  I just cracked up.  Oh the joys of youth to just pull an awesome race out without stressing about training schedules and what not!  I told him I'd race him again in 2 years when he gets back from his mission!  And my sister, Peggy, also did fantastic.  She was second in her age group in the 5K even though she was battling a nasty cold!  It was fun to hang out with them before and after.  It was also nice doing a local race and having it be pretty low key.  I'm all of a sudden finding a lot more half marathons that I want to run.  I don't know how many I actually will, but I'd like to get to the point where the distance of 13.1 isn't daunting.  I still get to mile 11 and I'm like, "Two more freaking miles!  This sucks!"  For now though, I'm still focusing on that week off!

5. 18 months!  Abby turned 18 months this week!  I can't believe how fast it has gone with her.  At 18 months she is a character.  She has this little run that she does everywhere around the house.  It's so cute.  Lately, she has been trying to jump and it's so funny because she doesn't quite get her feet off the ground, but she sure tries!  She loves to copy whatever her siblings are doing. She loves being around them.  She'll follow me around all day and then when they get home from school, she follows them around and she's so excited to be with them.  She is obsessed with belly buttons and growls every time she sees one or pokes her own when I'm changing her or something.  Weird, but funny.  She hasn't added too many more words to her vocabulary, but she imitates a lot of voice fluctuations and sounds so it shouldn't be long.  She loves to pick up a book and turn the pages and jabber at each page.  She loves to be outside and she loves to throw balls.  She also will through tantrums and when I tell her not to do something she'll hit me and pull my hair.  She actually can be a little naughty.  We're working on this already.  She's quite attached to me, but she loves when she hears the garage open and Jerry comes home from work.

Wouldn't you love to come home to that every day?  She gets a little distracted when the camera comes out so I had Sara keep her focused, but this is what it's like every evening.  Needless to say, Jerry loves it!  We love her so much and are so happy she is in our family!!

Three this Sunday

1. The Moab Half!!  Finally!  Finally, I got this race over with!  I have been thinking about this for a long time!  It was so awesome!  The whole weekend was fabulous!  I wanted to get a good picture of the canyon we ran down to give you an idea of why I wanted to run this race so bad, but my picture taking skills are less than stellar so here's the picture from the race brochure:

It was so gorgeous, deep blue skies, red rock, the river.  Loved it!  At least once a mile I made myself take a deep breath and look around.

It was so fun to run with Jerry and my brothers.  We had a great dinner the night before with Vaughn and Patty and lunch after with all of us and Jay.  I was really glad to have Jay and Vaughn with me because you had to board buses more than two hours before the race started and get shipped up the canyon to wait for the race to start.  I would have been really bored if they weren't there with me.  I felt bad for Jerry but the 5 mile race started 30 minutes earlier so he said it was ok.

Vaughn and Patty picked us up before the race.  We had to board the buses in different areas so we had to leave Jerry here and wish him luck!

Then we met up with Jay and got ready to get on the buses.  It was a little chilly and windy in Moab and we knew it would be even colder up the canyon in the shade so we tried to dress warm. 

Then we got on the buses!

Luckily we were all able to meet back up at the end!  I ran a couple of minutes slower than I'd hoped, but it was ok.  The first couple of miles were downhill and I knew I was running fast but I wanted to see how long I could hold on to that pace.  Turns out I couldn't quite hold on to it for 13 miles.  The last 2.5 miles are out of the canyon, along the road in Moab and it. was. brutal.  At one point, for some reason, I thought of Dori in Finding Nemo singing, "Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming."  I started singing in my mind, "Just keep running.  Just keep running."  I was a little tired!  But I survived and was able to smile a few minutes after I finished!  The race was just so fun.  At about mile 9 there's a tough little uphill and the wind had picked up so at this hill the headwind was so fierce.  It was so strong it almost made you stop.  I was running next to some guy and he said to me, "Are we still moving forward?"  I laughed (and by laugh I mean blow spit and snot all over my face) and said, "Maybe, but just barely!"  Jerry did awesome in his race and I was very proud of him.  His goal was under an hour and he ran it in 55 minutes!  Pretty awesome!  Maybe I'll make a runner out of him yet.  Jay and Vaughn both ran awesome.  I was proud to be in such a solid group.

After a long lunch it was time for us to get back to the kids.  We'd left them with a college girl in our ward and it wasn't easy.  I was of course worried about Abby.  She is still up almost every single night.  Sometimes more than once and there are so many variables.  It was hard to leave her with non family and was again, one of the many times lately, I've wished we had family closer to us.  In the end though, she did great.  She didn't cry when we left, she only got up once and went back to sleep easily.  I was very relieved and it just made the whole trip even better.  

2. In other news  Matt had a school program this week that was all about the United States.  He got to take part in the flag ceremony and carry the United States flag.  He was pretty excited about that.  The fifth grade did a great job.  I was proud of him.

3. Abby and the lack of sleep  So like I said, Abby is just not a good sleeper.  I'm not quite sure how to get it under control, but I've got to figure out a way.  One day when I laid her down for her nap, she was mad at me and she flopped herself over in the corner and immediately fell asleep.  Silly girl.

 This morning she woke up around 2:30, went back to sleep and then woke up again at 6:30 when I brought her into my bed.  She fell back asleep snuggling with me which is pretty typical every night.  She woke up again at about 8 and started climbing on me and gently patted my eyes with her hand.  It was so funny.  We both giggled and took this picture.  She really is sweet, I just get so tired getting up with her every single night!

Six on Sunday

1. Spelling s.p.e.l.l.i.n.g. spelling This past week Matt participated in the school spelling bee.  Last Sunday he handed me the note from his teacher telling me that he would be participating in it this coming Thursday.  So, we had to cram in a lot of spelling in a few days.  The past two years we had studied for weeks before the bee so we felt like we were cramming it all in.  In a way though it worked out good because he wasn't too burnt out on spelling.  We mostly studied the 8th and 9th grade words he was given so I was a tiny bit nervous the first couple of rounds that he might trip up on an easier word.  But he was very confident every time he stepped to the microphone and he did excellent!  He spelled words like fellow, commentary (remember the a), indelible, brigadier and more.  After they had gone through all the words that had been given out to study, they had a list of random, unstudied words that they went through.  Matt did really well.  I don't know how many rounds it went, but in the round that he got out in there were 7 people left and 4 of them got out.  The word he got out on was Gibraltar.  He spelled it Gibraulter which I thought was a very good guess.  He said he almost spelled it with a J but then thought that most harder words would have a G as a trick so he went with G.  Good reasoning, I guess.  There was one other fifth grader in the round that he got out in and she got out as well so after the bee was over, the two of them had another spell off.  It took them several rounds, but Matt was able to spell the word correctly after she had missed so he won 5th grade champion.  The word he had to spell was sufficiently.  He was very excited about it!  He was excited to get a medal and also he will get his name engraved on the school trophy.  Each year he has gotten a little bit better and I know next year he will be even more anxious about winning the whole bee.  I was so proud of him.  Once we'd gotten past the words we'd practiced it was fun to see him work out the words in his mind.  He still was very confident and it was fun to watch him!  A random side note is that this week he got a spelling test back and he missed a word. His first miss this year. He was totally bummed so this was some redemption.  I also learned this week that when he takes his pretest each Monday, he purposely misses 1 to 2 words so he doesn't have to do extra bonus work for getting 100% on the pretest.  Knucklehead!

 He was number 35 out of 53 kids in the bee.  The bee lasted 2 1/2 hours.  It was crazy long!

 Sara took this picture of him at the microphone.  I spent most of the time out in the hall with Abby and would stick my head in when Jerry gave me the signal that he was up.  I seriously can't take the anxiety of watching my kids compete or perform.  It is way more nerve wracking then competing myself.  He said he was nervous the whole time.  You and me both buddy!

 He felt very relieved and excited that he won!  Yea Matt!

2. Spring Weather  We've had some nice warm days mixed in with some cooler days.  Yesterday Matt spent some time outside with Abby trying to teach her how to catch a ball.  It was cute to watch.

3. Economics  Matt and Kate are still having a lot of fun with their Rainbow Loom.  Matt started selling them to his classmates a couple of weeks ago.  He would come home each night with some orders and then he'd take them back the next day and collect his money.  It has been a really good learning experience for him.  He definitely has some intuitive economic sense.  He has learned to make samples of his product.  He has asked us about pricing and we've talked about charging enough that it covers material and time but not so much that the customers can't afford it.  After he sold a lot of basic bracelets he came home and learned how to make some harder bracelets so he could sell something new.  He has had a couple of friends start selling them as well so he's learned about how competition keeps the price down and is good for the consumer, but how monopolies are good for the business man.  It has been really fun to hear about his experiences and hear his solutions in dealing with them.  Now, he wants to get some charms and learn how to make bracelets with charms on them.  He wants to sell those on ebay.  Awesome.

4. Kate  Kate has been working hard on the school play.  She's really good to get up early in the morning for before school practices or she's good to get right to work on homework if she has after school practice.  I hope it will be fun once she gets to perform.  It sounds like some of the practices have been a little boring, but she has a couple of friends doing it with her so they have fun together.

5. Sara Sara is doing very well in school.  She's a very quiet obedient girl in class and has her teacher wishing the whole class was just like her!  She is definitely looking forward to first grade next year so she can go to school all day.  She gets a little bored in the afternoons and it's hard for me to keep her stimulated some days.  She's a smart girl and says that any kind of school work is her favorite!

6. One week!  One week until my first of two halfs.  I did something crazy and signed up for a half the next Saturday as well.  I haven't decided for sure if I'm going to run it; it will depend on how the Moab half goes and how sore I am.  After that, I am looking forward to taking some time off!  Jerry can't wait to get on his mountain bike more.  Hopefully, this running will help him be in top shape for the trails!

Sunday pictures

It's been pretty uneventful in the Nielsen household lately which is not a bad thing.  Here are some pictures of things we've been up to.

 Abby loves to pull these ducks around the house.  It is so darn cute.  I love when I can hear her coming down the hall with the ducks rattling behind her.  

Somehow, she noticed people stand with their legs crossed sometimes.  One morning when I was getting ready, I noticed her standing against the bed and trying to get the stance down.  She cross her legs, babble, laugh, uncross them and then start over.  It was so funny.  If only I knew what she was saying!

She loves to be a big kid.  Kate and Sara let her play school with them.  She was the naughty kid in Kate's class and had to go see Sara the principal.  The rest of the week Abby thought she was pretty big stuff sitting on the chair.  

 We have a book that is just pictures of golden retrievers and their owners.  Abby loves to look at it.  I was a little late on taking the picture, but she was turning every page and putting her head on the page to give the dogs a hug and kiss.  So random!

 Sara had a big week.  She's had a loose tooth that has been bugging her, but it was being really stubborn. One night we had the brilliant idea to tie her tooth to the back of Matt's remote control car.  Sara was totally excited to do it.  It went really... well, just watch the video.

She got a little freaked out at the last second, and the tooth didn't come out.

But it came out the next day when she bumped it with her tongue.  Phew!  That one was really bothering her.  After Kate wrote a note to the tooth fairy asking her what her name was, Sara wanted to do the same thing.  It turns out that Sara's tooth fairy's name is Sandreen.  Five points if you can tell me where I got that name!  It cracked me up all night after I wrote the note back to her.

What cool parents do.  Sara saw some Chuck E Cheeses commercial that says if your parents want to be cool, they take you to Chuck E Cheeses.  She hasn't let me forget that, so I took her and a friend on Friday.  They had fun.  Luckily, we made it out of there without any damage to the skee ball game or any person standing around it!  They were crazy, but they got a lot of tickets.  Sara even got the ball into the little 100 point ring.  I put Abby on a few of the little rides and she pretty much hated it!  It was a fun day and I'm so glad I can now be considered a cool mom!